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Hill Street Blues

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Ear Worm: Mike Post's iconic instrumental theme. If you grew up in the 1980s, you will recognize the first few bars of this tune.

Harsher in Hindsight: Dominique Dunne, daughter of writer Dominick Dunne and best known as the older daughter in Poltergeist, appeared on the show as a teenage mother and victim of parental abuse. Some of her bruises were real, having been inflicted by her violent boyfriend the night before. He murdered her shortly afterward.

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Hilarious in Hindsight: On this show, Jeffrey Tambor played a man trying to sort out his "feminine identity issues" through doctor-mandated cross-dressing. Tambor would later earn critical and popular acclaim through his role on Transparent, where he plays a transsexual woman coming to terms with her identity late in life.

Memetic Mutation: "Let's be careful out there." Several other cop shows have paid homage to the line.

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Values Dissonance: The first episode notoriously features the show putting the blame for a man molesting his stepdaughter on his new wife for not putting out. Similar '80s sexism pervades many other episodes.

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